Help

[Phil Tandy 2]

Help! I would like to take to the sim skies again. My last foray was fs98! I would like some advice on which sim to buy (even if it's not recent). My problem is that I have a relatively low spec machine. Win10,1tbhdd, 1.9ghz,1901mhz 2 cores, 8gig ram. 1gig graphics, 64bit. I have been on other forums with no replies, even if it's to say impossible. Hopefully you lovely people on Mutleys can advise.

[Captain Coffee 2,030]

No worries, you won't be ignored at Mutley's. I'm sure everyone is just trying to form a nice way to say your CPU sucks donkey sweetbreads...great sweaty smelly dirty ones.

 

I have no such PC attitudes , but a great deal of sympathy for your situation (Seriously, no one is excited about buying a new computer to play a game...ITS A SIMULATOR... they aren't certain they will LOVE to justify the expense...) and I would hopefully suggest that you can in fact use your horribad CPU, and other gear for FSX, but you will probably...certainly ...need to reduce all graphics and scenery sliders to their very minimum...and stick with the default program until you decide if you wish to upgrade the experience. FSX has been around longer than quad core CPU's ( I could be wrong about that) and so you can probably use it on your machine.

 

The more tech savvy of us will also want more information as to what actual components, in order to guess at what kind of actual performance you might get out of your machine...in particular what brand and specific model of CPU you have...Intel hopefully. Also the GPU brand/specific model would assist a ball park guestimate of your machine's capabilities.

 

Cheers new friend, hope we can get you up and flying without having to reinvent your system to radically.

~Coff.

[J G 927]

I think your processor speed may be a problem.

 

From the packet the following are claimed:

• FS9 needs a minimum processor speed of about 1/2 GHz
• FSX needs a minimum processor speed of about 1.0 GHz
• P3D needs a minimum processor speed of about 2.0 GHz

This spec will be based on a setup that has all the detail stripped out.  It will be rather a dull simulator.

 

Most of my experience is with FSX and I am now running P3D. For FSX I would not want to run on anything less than 3GHz as a processor speed that will give you a reasonably practical experience. This will exclude some of the more frame rate hungry addons but will give you a usable sim experience with most. Detail in the sim would have be set to middle settings and traffic down to very low or none.

 

I don't know about FS9 as I dont use it, but if you apply the above, then I would expect to see a processor speed of about 1.5 GHz as being the minimum practical processor speed. Perhaps a user of FS9 can comment here.

 

P3D has a higher bar again. P3D's performance on paper is better than FSX, but I think this is because it uses more up to date graphics card performance. From my own experience I would say that on balance that it is a little better than FSX but the biggest plus is it is more stable.

 

I hope this helps,

 

JG.

 

 

[Bruce (a.k.a. brian747) 142]

Hi Phil!

 

And a warm welcome to Mutleys!    

 

But your problem is a difficult one, sadly. As Matt gently intimated, your choice is between sticking to your present machine and <*cough*> not having a good experience, or else going to the likes of Scan, Chillblast, Overclockers UK, Mesh, or whoever and getting yourself an overclocked i5 paired with an nVidia graphics card that has at least 2Gb of memory — and then you will have the sort of experience that sims are meant to give. Flight simming isn't a cheap hobby when it comes to that initial hardware outlay, unfortunately.   

 

Since you're effectively starting from scratch, I would suggest that your sim of choice should probably be the latest version of Prepar3D (others sims are available).   

 

A few more details of your kit might help confirm the gloomy diagnosis, but one can't help feeling that two cores at 1.9GHz probably aren't going to cut it, I fear — for some time now the generally accepted lower limit for good performance with flight simming has been four (or eight) cores at 4GHz or above.

 

On the positive side, when you *do* get back into flight simming again you're going to be amazed by the improvements since fs98 — take a look at our screenshots section to give you some idea, although nothing beats the fun of having it all happening on the screen in front of you, with you at the controls....    

 

Whatever you decide, do let us know, and we'll offer you the best advice we can.    

 

Cheers,

 

bruce

a.k.a. brian747

 

[Phil Tandy 2]

Thanks everybody for your very swift responses. They have been very helpful albeit a little dispiriting and only confirmed my fears over my hardware. So now comes a long period of saving some hard earned and an even longer period of convincing my wife what a great investment it would be. I foresee endless bouts of tea making, washing up and God forbid IRONING!! Is this possibly the ultimate sacrifice to make in order play amongst the clouds? Once again many thanks although I don't see me making any more posts anytime soon. BIG SOB.

[Bruce (a.k.a. brian747) 142]

> "BIG SOB."

 

<sigh>  We sincerely feel your pain, Phil, but please understand also that we do appreciate your problems from our own personal experience.

 

Miracles are in very short supply; and AFAIK there are no multi-millionaires at Mutleys....   

 

Please accept that sometimes it's kinder to tell someone the truth rather than to suggest sticking plaster solutions for problems needing major surgery....

 

Good luck, and do let us know when you get things sorted.

 

Cheers,

 

bruce

a.k.a. brian747

 

 

[Jess-b 420]

1 hour ago, Phil Tandy said:

Thanks everybody for your very swift responses. They have been very helpful albeit a little dispiriting and only confirmed my fears over my hardware. So now comes a long period of saving some hard earned and an even longer period of convincing my wife what a great investment it would be. I foresee endless bouts of tea making, washing up and God forbid IRONING!! Is this possibly the ultimate sacrifice to make in order play amongst the clouds? Once again many thanks although I don't see me making any more posts anytime soon. BIG SOB.

Phil, don't dispair just yet. Your system will probably run FS2004 fairly well. Being dual core, may help, though fs2004 wasn't ever written with multi core use in mind, but that nice 1gb gpu could be a great equaliser. At the time I was flying fs2004, I don't think my gpu hit 512mb. 

 

Fs2004 can be made to look quite beautiful and there's more than enough freeware out there to keep you busy for no cost at all. 

 

So don't lose hope just yet. 

 

Best wishes, 

Jess B 

[J G 927]

I find that facing the wife with a 'fait accompli' when purchasing such things works.  

 

The storm only last a week, but the purchase much longer. No pain, no gain.

[Captain Coffee 2,030]

Unfortunately, the "It's easier to get forgiven, than permission" that works so well with permitting agencies, doesn't work nearly as well in relationships, and often gets changed to "Easier to get a Divorce Lawyer than Forgiveness".

 

I forgot that Earlier versions of MSFS were still available, if maybe only through ebay and craiglists...but yeah...good call Jess. If wanting to get back up and fly is unreasonably demanding a new system...get an old sim! Brilliant.